{"product_id":"2940012074829","title":"THE JOB AN AMERICAN NOVEL","description":"CHAPTER I\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCaptain Lew Golden would have saved any foreign observer a great deal of\u003cbr\u003etrouble in studying America. He was an almost perfect type of the petty\u003cbr\u003esmall-town middle-class lawyer. He lived in Panama, Pennsylvania. He had\u003cbr\u003enever been \"captain\" of anything except the Crescent Volunteer Fire\u003cbr\u003eCompany, but he owned the title because he collected rents, wrote\u003cbr\u003einsurance, and meddled with lawsuits.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe carried a quite visible mustache-comb and wore a collar, but no tie.\u003cbr\u003eOn warm days he appeared on the street in his shirt-sleeves, and\u003cbr\u003ediscussed the comparative temperatures of the past thirty years with\u003cbr\u003eDoctor Smith and the Mansion House 'bus-driver. He never used the word\u003cbr\u003e\"beauty\" except in reference to a setter dog--beauty of words or music,\u003cbr\u003eof faith or rebellion, did not exist for him. He rather fancied large,\u003cbr\u003eambitious, banal, red-and-gold sunsets, but he merely glanced at them as\u003cbr\u003ehe straggled home, and remarked that they were \"nice.\" He believed that\u003cbr\u003eall Parisians, artists, millionaires, and socialists were immoral. His\u003cbr\u003eentire system of theology was comprised in the Bible, which he never\u003cbr\u003eread, and the Methodist Church, which he rarely attended; and he desired\u003cbr\u003eno system of economics beyond the current platform of the Republican\u003cbr\u003eparty. He was aimlessly industrious, crotchety but kind, and almost\u003cbr\u003equixotically honest.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe believed that \"Panama, Pennsylvania, was good enough for anybody.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis last opinion was not shared by his wife, nor by his daughter Una.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMrs. Golden was one of the women who aspire just enough to be vaguely\u003cbr\u003ediscontented; not enough to make them toil at the acquisition of\u003cbr\u003eunderstanding and knowledge. She had floated into a comfortable\u003cbr\u003esemi-belief in a semi-Christian Science, and she read novels with a\u003cbr\u003econviction that she would have been a romantic person \"if she hadn't\u003cbr\u003emarried Mr. Golden--not but what he's a fine man and very bright and\u003cbr\u003eall, but he hasn't got much imagination or any, well, _romance_!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe wrote poetry about spring and neighborhood births, and Captain\u003cbr\u003eGolden admired it so actively that he read it aloud to callers. She\u003cbr\u003eattended all the meetings of the Panama Study Club, and desired to learn\u003cbr\u003eFrench, though she never went beyond borrowing a French grammar from the\u003cbr\u003eEpiscopalian rector and learning one conjugation. But in the pioneer\u003cbr\u003esuffrage movement she took no part--she didn't \"think it was quite\u003cbr\u003eladylike.\" ... She was a poor cook, and her house always smelled stuffy,\u003cbr\u003ebut she liked to have flowers about. She was pretty of face, frail of\u003cbr\u003ebody, genuinely gracious of manner. She really did like people, liked to\u003cbr\u003egive cookies to the neighborhood boys, and--if you weren't impatient\u003cbr\u003ewith her slackness--you found her a wistful and touching figure in her\u003cbr\u003eslight youthfulness and in the ambition to be a romantic personage, a\u003cbr\u003eMarie Antoinette or a Mrs. Grover Cleveland, which ambition she still\u003cbr\u003eretained at fifty-five.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe was, in appearance, the ideal wife and mother--sympathetic,\u003cbr\u003eforgiving, bright-lipped as a May morning. She never demanded; she\u003cbr\u003emerely suggested her desires, and, if they were refused, let her lips\u003cbr\u003edroop in a manner which only a brute could withstand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe plaintively admired her efficient daughter Una.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUna Golden was a \"good little woman\"--not pretty, not noisy, not\u003cbr\u003eparticularly articulate, but instinctively on the inside of things;\u003cbr\u003enaturally able to size up people and affairs. She had common sense and\u003cbr\u003eunkindled passion. She was a matter-of-fact idealist, with a healthy\u003cbr\u003ewoman's simple longing for love and life. At twenty-four Una had half a\u003cbr\u003edozen times fancied herself in love. She had been embraced at a dance,\u003cbr\u003eand felt the stirring of a desire for surrender. But always a native\u003cbr\u003eshrewdness had kept her from agonizing over these affairs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe was not--and will not be--a misunderstood genius, an undeveloped\u003cbr\u003eartist, an embryonic leader in feminism, nor an ugly duckling who would\u003cbr\u003eput on a Georgette hat and captivate the theatrical world. She was an\u003cbr\u003euntrained, ambitious, thoroughly commonplace, small-town girl. But she\u003cbr\u003ewas a natural executive and she secretly controlled the Golden\u003cbr\u003ehousehold; kept Captain Golden from eating with his knife, and her\u003cbr\u003emother from becoming drugged with too much reading of poppy-flavored\u003cbr\u003enovels.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe wanted to learn, learn anything. But the Goldens were too\u003cbr\u003erespectable to permit her to have a job, and too poor to permit her to\u003cbr\u003ego to college. From the age of seventeen, when she had graduated from\u003cbr\u003ethe high school--in white ribbons and heavy new boots and tight new\u003cbr\u003eorgandy--to twenty-three, she had kept house and gone to gossip-parties\u003cbr\u003eand unmethodically read books from the town library--Walter Scott,\u003cbr\u003eRichard Le Gallienne,","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47081041101040,"sku":"2940012074829","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012074829_p0.jpg?v=1763552414","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012074829","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}